If you are already a few years old, you may remember Marlene Morreau presenting, together with Jordi Estadella, a program in which the public applauded or booed mercilessly what was in front of them and decided whether or not he could continue longer on stage. A kind of ‘Tú sí que vales’ or ‘Got Talent’ but with that component of sadism that only the 90s could have. Its name was ‘El semáforo’, a program that went down in history as the departure shuttle for the most unexpected singer in Spain: Cañita Brava.
The traffic light is back
Manuel Gonzalez Savin born on March 2, 1946 (if you don’t figure it out, 77 years ago, although he would never admit his age) in the Las Jubias neighborhood of A Coruña. Next to his house he always had the sea, so his life was directed to be a worker on the pier, in the El Muro fish market, while in his spare time he composed songs under the name “Cañita Brava”, which came from the time when he sold ice cream. His first manager was Cholo, his cousin, who accompanied him to all the performances in the province (the first, by the way, in Los Castros, A Coruña, in 1976). Life was calm, at least until she met Benigno Elriz.
Elriz became his new representative: he knew he had a diamond on his hands, so he spoke with Juan Ballesteros, a screenwriter for Chicho Ibáñez-Serrador who now works as an editor at TVE. “Ballesteros told Chicho that I had 30 songs and Chicho told him ‘bring it to TVE, it suits me'”Cañita commented in an interview for Vice. Her first appearance in ‘El semáforo’ was accompanied by silver spoons to the percussion and affirming “Yes, I sing of everything. In Spanish, in Russian, in English, in Spanish, my creations, my own creations, invented by me. I don’t copy and the most difficult thing is to compose a song”.
That first time Cañita sang ‘Spinkin you’ and was booed by the stands, but he did not give up: right after, after the performance, he did the sports broadcast of a goal at the request of the presenter. Jordi Estadella, in the best Javier Cárdenas style a few years later, inquired into the personality of that television monster, who would come back again and again, even out of competition (Chicho was not going to let his goose that laid the golden eggs go) to sing own songs like ‘La pepeta’, ‘El fugitivo’, ‘La pota del caldo de María’ or ‘The shepherds are coming’. Cañita became the idol of a generation that did not know whether to applaud or laugh, but it turned him into a milestone in pop culture.
The 6000 pesetas
From overnight, Cañita began to do concerts throughout Spain. He had fans, people loved him and he came to earn seven million pesetas (at the time) in a single year. On July 12, 1997, ‘The traffic light’ was finished, but our hero would still have a little more to endure at the top of the wave: March 13, 1998 a small film by a certain Santiago Segura was released in Spain that would end up becoming a social phenomenon: ‘Torrente, the stupid arm of the law’.
It was Segura himself who called Benigno so that the artist could play a role in the film. We all know which because the phrase “Torrente, you owe me 6000 pesetas of whiskey” It has passed to the general homeland culturilla. While she was trying her hand at the cinema, her fame as a singer was still maintained. He performed for 5,000 people, released an album called ‘Cañita Brava y sus creaciones’ and he won a good handful of money, but a tragic event (the death of his girlfriend at the time) made him drown his sorrows in gambling.
Since then, his fame fell, like that of so many nineties myths (Chiquito de la Calzada in front) despite the fact that some wanted to help him: he made sets at the time of ‘La noria’, he gave the Galician bells of 2012, he sang ‘Amiyu’ in ‘First Dates’, he dropped into the series by David Suárez for YouTube ‘Vincent Finch’ and Santiago Segura counted on him for all the ‘Torrentes’ (except the second). In more modern times, whoever is keeping an eye out can catch him in ‘LOL: if you laugh, you lose’, the Amazon Prime Video reality show. That does not mean, sadly, that he is doing better.
The decline of Cañita
It was last year when the truth about its financial state came out: almost thirty years after its brilliant success, Cañita Brava hardly gave concerts and survived on a pension of 400 eurosas he commented to ‘Save me’, always eager to have a neck on which to throw his jaws: “It’s strangers who cheat. Fans don’t cheat”he said, confessing that he had spent all his money on a girlfriend who was out of work.
Cañita shares a flat, pays 230 euros a month and doesn’t give up. His last great joy was on his YouTube channel, where he had the opportunity to have a (who knows if the last) great hit: ‘The creation of love’ was a classic from his repertoire for which a group of friends created a video clip, gave him a study and instrumentalized a theme that It already has 136,000 visits with which it wants to make it clear that it is still available to do concerts (or whatever comes up).
Lately, our protagonist has tried it on Twitch, sending New Year or Carnival messages and playing concerts with Tam Tam Go: although the light of yesteryear never returns, As long as ‘La Pepeta’ plays on stage and its name brings smiles to an entire generation, there will continue to be Cañita Brava.
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